With sidewalks still coated in ice more than two days after a wicked storm, residents and city politicians in Halifax are debating who should be responsible for cleaning up the wintry mess.
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Resident Christopher Doucette said he was worried about walking around the city on Thursday because of the precarious walkways.
“It’s so treacherous that I’m scared I’m going to seriously fall down,” he told CTV Atlantic. “Yesterday, I slipped so much I skated down this road on my feet. I was just sliding.”
Five years ago, the Halifax Regional Municipality took over sidewalk snow-clearing duties from residents who pay a higher tax rate now for the service. The city employs a mix of municipal employees and contracted crews for the work.
Before the city swooped in, homeowners and business owners were responsible for cleaning up the sidewalks in front of their properties.
“There were properties under the old system that didn’t get shovelled, but we had a bylaw that said you must clear it by a certain number of hours and there were bylaw officers that would go out and enforce that,” Shawn Cleary, the councillor for District 9, explained.
Cleary said he’s not sure the city-led system is an improvement.
“If you look at the service difference, the quality of walkability of sidewalks now versus five years ago, I don't think we’re any better now than we were five years ago,” he said.
Resident Caroline Anderson appeared to agree with that assessment as she carefully made her way down one of the city’s icy sidewalks on Thursday.
“I just think that whoever is hired by the city to do the sidewalks has failed miserably so far this winter,” she said. “Last night I had to walk on the street. I couldn’t even walk on the sidewalk.”
Anderson said she wishes the municipal government would address residents’ concerns about the state of the sidewalks during the winter.
“I really preferred when we did our own,” she said.
Trevor Harvie, the city’s winter supervisor of operations, said it was a city council directive to take on snow removal duties. He said reverting to the old system where residents cleared the sidewalks in front of their own properties could still be an option.
“It’s always something that council could re-entertain, but by all means if someone wants to help out and clear in front of their property, we would never take that away from them,” he said.
Cleary, on the other hand, said he thinks more needs to be done to re-evaluate the city’s snow clearing system. He said he has moved several motions imploring council to look at it since he was elected in 2016.
“What I’d love to see is either us [sic] improve the service and actually make it so that able bodied people and disabled people could easily and safely get around on our sidewalks and our crosswalks,” he said. “If we can’t do that, admit it, and give the job back to the residents.”
Cleary said a staff report is being conducted on his latest motion to look at the problem and he will bring up the subject next week when council convenes its first meeting of the New Year.
